arthurj

Mine can open from both sides, yes. There’s a separate button for each direction.

No chance of being able to fix and respray, unfortunately.

I got rear-ended while waiting at a roundabout. The impact was minor but the rear bumper's a bit bent and has a crack. Does anyone know roughly how much it would cost to source a replacement and get it replaced? 20-series Vellfire, black. Toyota will do it of course, but it'll cost a fortune. Was hoping for a cheaper one from a breaker's yard in the UK or something, I just don't know where to look.

Yes it’s legal to only have one reversing light and for the other one to be replaced by a fog light. There has to be a separate switch on the dash, clearly marked. My 20-series has this setup.

Be careful with replacing the reflectors as you need to make sure you still have working reflectors to pass the MOT! My Vellfire has one of the reversing lights replaced with a rear fog light, as you only need one reversing light.

Not the same issue, but my ATH20 with the same engine did have a piston rebuild in Japan due to recall. I haven’t heard of any others that have gone through this process though, it think it may have only affected a small number of cars. The hybrid works in quite a different way to the standard petrol. Similar engine but it uses a different cycle and pressure build up due to engine braking is not an issue because hybrids simply don’t do it.

I still have mine, mainly because the kids love watching dvds in the back and it’s great for that.

I think those 4 are for Japanese TV, either an aerial or decoder box.

As it happens…

Let me know if you find one. I can’t find anyone nearby who will look at the hybrid stuff. I’ve been looking for over a year now.

Britax Romer fit the middle row fine.

Absolutely no problem so far. We’ll see what happens over winter but I’ve had none of the symptoms I was getting before. The hybrids need an AGM battery, they provide a solid 12-14V even when partially drained, unlike lead-acid batteries, which can drop much lower. The hybrid computer needs a minimum of 12V to boot up.

Well, sort of. The Alphard is closer to the size and weight as a T4 or T5, so it’s not fair to compare to a Golf or Passat. A T4 diesel gets around 35mpg in real life, and I hear a T5 averages around 40mpg, maybe slightly better on a long run. My Yeti diesel doesn’t get close to 70mpg on a long run, ever. The brochure said it does, but I get at most 50 if I turn the air con off and have the wind behind me. I don’t even have a heavy foot. The way to think about the hybrid in the Alphard is as a turbocharger with 4WD. Combined power puts it closer to the 3.5 than the 2.4 and fuel efficiency is better than both, certainly better than the 4WD model. Is it cost-efficient though? No.

You can’t change the language on that model, sorry.

I did a long drive in my hybrid recently and got 630km to a tank, which is 55l. So that’s about 33mpg on average.